


A family from the darkness

by liionne



Series: Tumblr Prompts [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic, Tumblr Prompt, bc everything i write is stucky, hydra clones, implied stucky - Freeform, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-09 01:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4327842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liionne/pseuds/liionne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt? Steve and Sam tracking down a promising Hydra facility and finding a child sized cryostasis unit housing a horrifyingly familiar face. Bucky chasing a lead about his origins in Russia and finding a tiny Nat clone in a partially active Red Room facility. Natasha finding herself in Germany protecting a sickly blond toddler from a hybrid group of corrupt SHIELD/HYDRA scientists. Basically #CapFamily&Clones, or how Steve, Bucky and Nat found family and redemption in their bite sized selves</p>
            </blockquote>





	A family from the darkness

**Author's Note:**

> This is honestly one of the best prompts I've ever received, and I just wish I had of done it more justice - I feel like I've let the side down. But never mind, onward we go!
> 
> Unbeta'd.

It’s not like they haven’t seen stuff like this before. They know what a cryochamber looks like, have seen enough of them in the HYDRA bases they’d wiped out across the Northern states. Only difference was, none of those had been working.

This one leaks icy blue light into the room, which is dark save for a few blinking monitors, a computer that is showing nothing but a few flickering files that they’ve already decided that they don’t need. Steve waves his hand forward, signalling for them to move straight for it. He leads the way, edging closer, and the display panel tells him that this is #4, frozen in 1965, awaiting approval. Steve doesn’t know what kind of approval, but he decides he doesn’t care. He steps forward, and peers into the chamber, and he feels his heart stop. 

A little boy, eyes closed, brown hair a little long and shaggy, waits.

Sam takes a look, but Steve has already set the cryochamber to let him out.

~*~

He decided to go it alone because Steve did not need any of this. Poor, kind Steve doesn’t need to know what they did to him  _before_  they wiped him regularly,  _before_  he was what he has been for the last few decades, before HYDRA. He was something worse before that, he thinks. He just needs to find out for sure.

He finds a Red Room facility in Moscow; still semi-active, but he takes care of that. He searches room, after room, after room, and eventually he comes to a halt. He’s in a row of cells, big, thick metal doors with tiny windows that he peeks into with care. The first few are empty, empty rooms with empty white walls, and empty metal beds.

Then he finds one that isn’t.

A girl, with red hair down to her shoulders and eyes that cut right through to his soul sits with her back against the wall, legs hanging off the bed. She stares at him through the window.

He breaks the door open.

~*~

She’d like to know how this happened, but she doesn’t. She was sent in to infiltrate, to take notes, because she’s a  _spy_  and that’s her  _job_. Go in, find out who’s corrupt and who isn’t, get out so they can send in the cavalry. 

And yet, here she is, running through Munich with a sickly blonde toddler on her hip, headed for the shield helicopter that is waiting to pick her up.

She takes a bullet to the shoulder for her efforts, but it doesn’t hurt as much as his quiet wheezing does, the little whines of a scared child who doesn’t want to admit just how scared she is.

She gets him on the helicopter, but he refuses to move from her lap. She leaves him there; he’s not doing any harm.

~*~

Three little children sit on a sofa in the penthouse of Avenger’s Tower. Opposite them, stand their older counterparts. Bucky hasn’t moved in a while, as has Natasha, and Steve sits chewing his thumbnail.

“What’re we gonna do?” Steve asks, turning his body away to make their conversation private.

“What  _can_  we do?” Bucky asks, which, Steve thinks, as a much better question. The little blonde boy’s eyes flick to Natasha, and he worries at his lower lip with his teeth. She’s never been a particularly maternal person, but she was caught off guard.

They had all asked them their names. The little brown haired boy had seemed confused by even the thought of a name, but when the little blonde boy said his name was  _twelve_ , and the little red haired girl said her name was  _devyat_ (”It’s Russian for nine,” Bucky had explained to Sam, who had joined Steve in looking a little bit sick), Steve told him what he had found on the cryochamber’s display. The little brown haired boy was named  _four_. 

Natasha looks at the others. “Fury wants to take them to a SHIELD facility in London, have them cared for there.”

“SHIELD have baby sitting facilities?” Bucky asks, looking between the two. “I justdon’t think it should be up to a bunch of agents to--”

He’s interrupted by a fit of coughing coming from behind them, surprisingly loud for such a tiny little boy. He hacks his lungs up, making the little boy beside him, number four, look distressed. The little girl seems unphased, but Bucky notices how her eyes are a fraction wider than they were before.

“Alright, easy,” Bucky says. Steve and Natasha watch, slightly confused, before Steve realises. HYDRA could wipe a lot of things away, but maybe not everything, as Bucky pulls the little boy into his lap and rubs his back, a few firm pats between his shoulder blades and a comforting hand on his wait, until the little boy settles, and stills. Bucky hushes him gently, and Steve gives a small smile.

“I think maybe we should keep them.” He murmurs to Natasha.

She looks to the other two little children, who have edged closer and closer to Bucky, and she nods. “Maybe.”

~*~

It isn’t plain sailing.

Fury nearly bursts a blood vessel when they tell them they want to keep them, but there’s really nothing he can do; they share their DNA, which makes them either their family or the property, and either one puts them under the care of themselves. 

They move, momentarily, into the tower. Steve’s floor has enough bedrooms for all of them anyway, so Natasha can camp out there, as well as all three children. And honestly, it seems the three children don’t want to be separated now that they’re together. Steve and Bucky have to build three ikea beds, and three ikea wardrobes, and put them all into the same room. They then after to fill all three wardrobes, which Natasha takes upon herself, and then, finally, they’re all moved in.

The first night is the worst. Twelve coughs throughout the night, tossing and turning, and so Four sits by his side and pats his back just like Bucky had done not long before. Devyat sits awake, not moving, not closing her eyes for a second.

It leads to a cranky morning. In fact, all of the first few mornings are cranky. Getting everyone dressed and fed and washed is an absolute nightmare, seeing as between the three of them, they have practically no idea on how to raise one child, let alone three.

On the third day, they let them pick their own names, giving them a baby book to sort through. The little blonde boy and the little girl can both read, but they find that Bucky’s little clone, Four, isn’t as quick, stumbles a little bit over his words. Steve vows, silently, to teach him to read. Four decides, after a lot of thinking, that he wants to be called Lucas, and Thirteen decides that he wants to be called Benjamin. Devyat picks Anastasia, and together, they start to learn to write their new names.

~*~

Things do get easier from there.

It’s an odd dynamic, the three of them, but Benjamin ends up spending most of his nights up on Natasha’s floor, worming into bed with her and clinging to her side, whilst Steve finds that both Anastasia and Lucas seem to cling to him – whilst Anastasia likes to play dress up with Bucky, she’ll always have one eye on Steve, watching. Lucas likes to climb onto his knee and read, waving various children’s books at him, and when they run out of those he picks up the newspaper, and fumbles around on the tablet for something else to read.

It’s odd. They all know that as they grow more and more, they’re going to look more and more like them, and they have no idea what HYDRA did to them, if they did anything at all. What side effects they may have, what training may crop up. All they can do is enjoy it whilst it lasts, their little family that they found in the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts, questions and anything else are welcome at [my tumblr](http://achaiion.tumblr.com)


End file.
